Wences Casares, CEO of the wallet platform Xapo, has announced the company intends to upgrade to Bitcoin Classic and got a harsh response. The statement came as the most of the bitcoin industry agreed to use SegWit.
On 21 February the Bitcoin Roundtable, representing, among all, about 80% of the network’s hash power, a number of leading exchanges and bitcoin core developers, reached an agreement on further steps towards the system’s upgrade, having previously excluded the option of moving to Bitcoin Classic.
“Xapo is planning to upgrade to Classic. We're committed to helping bitcoin scale and to supporting the initiatives that can take us there,” Casares wrote, citing in his very next tweet the Brian Armstrong's critical post about the agreement reached by the roundtable.
The declaration of Xapo CEO attracted massive critical response, commenters blaming Xapo for making the crucial decision after the company have not, in their view, shown much interest in the preceding discussions over the block size. Some wrote the gesture would run counter to the needs of miners, while others ironically nodded at Xapo's not having the mining capacity of its own at all.
The replies varied from: “Without support from miners, running Classic is an empty gesture,” to “Sad to see Xapo moving into anti-Bitcoin camp organized by Coinbase and Circle,” to even more laconic “lol what?”
Still, apart from many disappointed, some readers expressed their support of the decision, putting under doubt the fact that the group known as the Bitcoin Roundtable will define the state of bitcoin digital currency for a long time.
The heated debate about the ways to increase bitcoin's block size has been on for a few months now, with numerous attempts made to reach the consensus none of which yet has gathered 100% support of the community.